Fawnahareo’s Placehttps://fawnahareo.com
Life as a mom in the YukonFri, 04 Nov 2016 12:29:29 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngFawnahareo’s Placehttps://fawnahareo.com
A mouse named Mihttps://fawnahareo.com/2016/09/25/a-mouse-named-mi/
https://fawnahareo.com/2016/09/25/a-mouse-named-mi/#commentsMon, 26 Sep 2016 07:28:00 +0000http://fawnahareo.com/?p=2982]]>Once upon a time, Halia had a mouse named Mi. Halia forms very strong attachments with certain critters, and Mi was a constant companion. He had a little keychain clip on him and usually she kept him clipped to her backpack so he went to school with her pretty much everyday. She’d detach him and play with him around the house, too, and he even went to birthday parties. (Here he is at a birthday party photo booth.)

And one day, sometime in early spring this year, he was gone.

We didn’t think that much of it at first because we figured he’d turn up. Mi is a small mouse and easily lost. Halia’s room was not exactly tidy most of the time.

But he didn’t turn up, and still he didn’t turn up. There were many, many nights when Halia would cry for him. We thought it might ease up with time, but instead it intensified.

Let’s face it, this is not an easy time for the girls. No matter how gentle we are trying to be, the separation and imminent move to a new house are big, emotional changes for everyone in the family.

She did report one day that someone else at school had a mouse just like Mi clipped to her backpack. I told her to ask that other girl where she had got it. Halia reported back that it had been a gift from a friend. (“Well, if there’s another one around, it must be possible to find a replacement,” I thought.)

I tried looking online for a new Mi, but I didn’t know what brand he was. My searches for “white mouse toy”, “white rat keychain”, “small plush mouse”, and every combination I could think of yielded no results that looked like Mi.

Halia couldn’t remember where we had procured Mi; she thought maybe the Vancouver airport or possibly the Ottawa airport. She was pretty sure it was an airport. (But she’s been in a lot of airports.) (“White mouse airport” yielded no better results.)

I realized that the nightly tears were probably mostly a channel for Halia’s tough emotions around our changing family, but it was heartbreaking and persistent. Finally, I decided to ask the school secretary to put me in touch with the older girl’s family so I could find out who had given the gift so I could get in touch with that family to find out where the mouse had been purchased so I could find a replacement.

I talked to the secretary this past Friday, feeling utterly ridiculous. She passed the message along to the vice principal of the school and he called me to assure me that he would put some time into investigating and had already talked to the student’s teacher. I felt even more ridiculous, taking up precious administrative time on a quest for a mouse. He assured me that these are the things we do for our children’s well-being. He promised he would follow up with me on Monday.

But Halia came home from school on Friday and shouted for me as soon as she came in the door.

“Guess what?!”

“What?” I asked, mystified.

And she held up a scruffy white mouse.

The student with Mi had sought out Halia after school and given him to her. And I swear to you that Halia was over the moon and happier than I’ve seen her in many, many months.

Now I could finally look up the brand: Schaffer. A search for “Schaffer white mouse” immediated turned up results. Not only that, but he’s a “Rudolph Schaffer Mi Mouse” and sold mainly in Europe. So it seems Mi was named before we even brought him home and he must have come from the Frankfurt airport. Which means the Mi the other student had been carrying around truly was Halia’s all along.

Such a small thing, but it really feels like a cloud has been lifted. Mi is home and Halia has gone right back to carrying him everywhere with her. I know it won’t last forever, but for now, she has exactly what she needs.

Filed under: Halia]]>https://fawnahareo.com/2016/09/25/a-mouse-named-mi/feed/4Fawnmi-the-white-ratimage1.JPGEnd of the cursehttps://fawnahareo.com/2016/08/04/end-of-the-curse/
https://fawnahareo.com/2016/08/04/end-of-the-curse/#commentsFri, 05 Aug 2016 07:12:00 +0000http://fawnahareo.com/?p=2938]]>Decades ago, around age 6 or 7, I’d say, my sister and my parents and I were out on a lake in northern Ontario. We were in our red canoe, my mom at the bow, my father in the stern, and my sister and I at the bottom on either side of the middle thwart.

We were all fishing, but since we were so young, my dad gave us kids rods without reels. We knew pretty much nothing about fishing, except that we should be quiet. Nemmy and I sat as still as we could, with our hooks dangling beneath the canoe, listening to the gentle “whirr” of my dad’s rod when he would cast.

Suddenly, there was a tug on my line. A mighty pull. I think I started to pull the rod up, but a second later, a shining body leapt out of the water and flashed in the sun. It landed with a great splash and my line went light. Gone was the fish − a pike, I should think − and gone was the hook.

And that was the last time I caught a fish.

I went fishing a few more times on family camping trips. And there was that deep-sea fishing experience in PEI the summer before grade 12, where everyone on the boat caught something. Except for me.

I was convinced that mighty northern pike had cursed me for trying to hook him. None of his fishy brethren would ever come near me again.

These past 6 months have been very heavy for me as Michael and I begin the process of separation and divorce. It has been an intense period for many reasons and I have had some very dark and broken days. Part of my strategy to redefine myself is to do things I have always wanted to do, but never have got around to. Last Saturday, for example, I went on a 6-hour solo hike up a mountain. I don’t think I’ve ever actually done that before.

Earlier this week, I contacted my friend Valery and asked her to take me fishing. And tonight we did just that.

We drove out the Hidden Lakes, a couple of which are stocked with rainbow trout and kokanee. Valery explained how to rig and bait my line for trout and showed me how to cast. She said that since it had been such a warm day, the fish might not actually come close enough to shore to bite, but we’d have a nice evening out, at least. Since I had no expectations, that was fine by me.

A wee 4-incher nibbled at Valery’s line early in the evening. After that, the fish were pretty quiet, though we enjoyed the company of a loon calling a few times, and a beaver and a muskrat showed up, as well. Valery would tell me little bits about fish behaviour in between casts, and I worked on getting my hook out a decent distance from shore.

And then suddenly, there was a tug on my line.

I wasn’t sure at first that it was a fish. Perhaps my hook was simply caught on an underground log. But the waters near the shore are clear and in moments, I could see the silver body of a rainbow trout fighting the pull of my line. Moments later, I had landed it on the shore.

Valery was every bit as delighted as I was. She showed me how to bleed it, and then she also showed me how to clean it properly. It was a female trout (Valery showed me the roe!) and 13 inches, so not huge, but a respectable size so everyone in the family can have a taste at dinner time tomorrow. We’d have taken a picture at the lake, but neither of us had a working picture-taking apparatus. So this kitchen shot will have to do, instead:

Thank you, Ms. Trout, for the gift of your life. Thank you for breaking the curse, and thank you for feeding my family.

This morning, Halia shouted out at the breakfast table in great excitement, “Mama, it’s loose!!!” In the way of small children, Halia has been waiting impatiently for her first loose tooth, feeling as though she is behind everyone else.

Yesterday we noticed she has an adult central incisor already coming up behind the baby tooth, but didn’t notice the baby tooth being particularly loose. But this morning, it was moveable.

By the time Halia got off the bus after school, the tooth was positively precarious and Halia spent a lot of time crying as she ate her afternoon snack and kept accidentally bumping it. Finally, while I was cooking supper, I had a closer look and realized it was barely hanging on.

“Halia, do you want me to just pull it out for you?” I was surprised when she nodded a tearful yes. (Jade has adamantly refused to let us touch her loose teeth.) “It will hurt for a moment,” I said.

“I know,” she said. “I want you to pull it out.”

I decided the best method, rather than using my fingers, would be to do the old string-attached-to-the-door trick. We got a long length of floss and it took me three tries to get a good knot around the wibbly-wobbly thing. Then I got Halia to stand right by the door and tied it onto the knob.

“Okay,” I said, “now stand back a bit so we can slam the door.” She stepped back. Further than planned. And the tooth was suddenly hanging on the end of the line, swinging from the doorknob. Halia and I looked at each other in surprise and she burst out laughing.

I’d tied such a good knot to the tooth that it took me a minute to extricate it. Halia gleefully took the prize into her eager hands and ran off to show her sister.

As you can see, she’s pretty proud of losing her first tooth.

Filed under: Halia, Life Updates, Teeth]]>https://fawnahareo.com/2014/10/14/halia-the-brave/feed/3FawnIMG_7469.JPGIMG_7473.JPGPoems for the seasonhttps://fawnahareo.com/2014/10/07/poems-for-the-season/
https://fawnahareo.com/2014/10/07/poems-for-the-season/#commentsTue, 07 Oct 2014 19:45:49 +0000http://fawnahareo.com/?p=2929]]>I started a morning routine of taking Nanuq for a walk after seeing the girls off on their school bus. Fall has long been my favourite season and I’ve been relishing the day-to-day changes in the forest paths behind my house. Lately my morning routine has grown to include composing a few lines to capture the mood of the forest.

With my phone invariably in my pocket, I started posting these little vignettes to Twitter; this adds the constraint of keeping each poem to less than 140 characters. You may notice that many of my daily poems took the form of haikus, but not all.

Since these fragments will eventually get buried on Twitter, I thought I’d collect them up and post them here.

October 1
Yes, we may complain
But we’re winter fatalists
Seeking attention

October 1 (on my way home from an evening concert)
Low-slung moon hanging heavy in the sky
Half-hid in shadow, half-face bright
Sweeping the earth, drawing my gaze
Crown jewel of the night

October 6The earth falls asleep
Nature sighs, hibernating
We go back to work

Filed under: Life, the Universe, and Everything]]>https://fawnahareo.com/2014/10/07/poems-for-the-season/feed/2FawnPleased as Punchhttps://fawnahareo.com/2014/09/21/pleased-as-punch/
https://fawnahareo.com/2014/09/21/pleased-as-punch/#commentsMon, 22 Sep 2014 04:15:07 +0000http://fawnahareo.wordpress.com/?p=2927]]>Jade is going to be a little Harlequin doll in this year’s Northern Lights School of Dance production of The Nutcracker. She is pleased as punch about it!

Speaking of “pleased as punch”, I decided to read up a little bit on the history of the Harlequin character and learned a number if interesting things, including that commedia dell’arte is the ancestor of the British “Punch and Judy” shows.

I’ve only ever heard of Punch and Judy in books and songs, but have never actually seen one. I didn’t realize that many of the glove-puppet characters I’ve encountered in my life are actually typical Punch and Judy characters.

On top of all that, reading about Punch and Judy suddenly reminded me of a song I learned a long, long time ago, probably in the very first year I was taking piano lessons, so perhaps just after I turned 4. I haven’t thought of the song in years and at first just the first line popped into my head. After about an hour, I think I have recalled the rest of the lyrics, as well as the melody.

“Punch and Judy are in town,
Oh, what fun to see them clown.
Hurry, hurry, sister Sue,
Show begins at half-past two!”

Strange how music can stick so firmly in our brains and be recalled three decades later.

I’m betting Jade will long remember the thrill of being a little Harlequin doll in The Nutcracker. I know that I’m delighted for her.

And it’s not just because I feel a little smarter now that I know whence comes the expression “pleased as (an apparently often self-satisfied) Punch”.

Filed under: Life Updates]]>https://fawnahareo.com/2014/09/21/pleased-as-punch/feed/2FawnIMG_7262.JPGTreasures from the greenhousehttps://fawnahareo.com/2014/07/31/treasures-from-the-greenhouse/
https://fawnahareo.com/2014/07/31/treasures-from-the-greenhouse/#respondFri, 01 Aug 2014 01:20:46 +0000http://fawnahareo.wordpress.com/?p=2923]]>Thanks to Michael’s hard work planting the greenhouse and garden this year, plus our friend Robert’s diligent watering while we were away in Europe, we now have some multi-coloured treasures to harvest.

I can’t wait to turn the tomatoes and oregano into a salad. I think I’ll sprinkle on a few precious grains of the “Fleur de sel de Carmague” salt my Oma gave me years ago; I use it sparingly on my best dishes where the salt will shine and really boost the flavour of the dish. We drove through this region last week and I smiled in recognition.

Filed under: Life Updates]]>https://fawnahareo.com/2014/07/31/treasures-from-the-greenhouse/feed/0Fawn20140731-181409-65649179.jpgThere was a little girl who had a little curlhttps://fawnahareo.com/2014/07/26/there-was-a-little-girl-who-had-a-little-curl/
https://fawnahareo.com/2014/07/26/there-was-a-little-girl-who-had-a-little-curl/#respondSun, 27 Jul 2014 05:54:13 +0000http://fawnahareo.com/2014/07/26/there-was-a-little-girl-who-had-a-little-curl/]]>We are on our last half a day in Europe and in this one moment of stillness, I thought I would relate a trivial — but curious — discovery we made.

Jade has a ringlet of curly hair growing at the nape of her neck.

This may seem unremarkable, but the rest of her hair is straight. She was actually born with curly hair and had soft curls until after her second birthday. After her seizures started, with her hair getting longer, I noticed the hair growing in was flat. Thinking her hair was getting too long and weighing down the curls, I had it cut… and that was the end of her curls.

I supposed that this was just a case of baby hair being different from bigger-girl hair and she has had straight hair ever since. Until now, that is.

So I am left wondering if her seizures or her diet affected the curl of her hair, whether she is going to get curls all over her head, if it’s the humidity in the European air, or just one of those random, strange things hair sometimes does…

Filed under: Life Updates]]>https://fawnahareo.com/2014/07/20/on-sant-pol-beach-in-spain/feed/0Fawn20140720-121824-44304151.jpg20140720-121820-44300007.jpg20140720-121821-44301218.jpg20140720-121822-44302241.jpg20140720-121823-44303188.jpg20140720-121820-44300842.jpgA few more pics of the European whirlwind tourhttps://fawnahareo.com/2014/07/18/a-few-more-pics-of-the-european-whirlwind-tour/
https://fawnahareo.com/2014/07/18/a-few-more-pics-of-the-european-whirlwind-tour/#commentsFri, 18 Jul 2014 20:00:16 +0000http://fawnahareo.wordpress.com/?p=2909]]>It was a long day of driving today, marred by wrong exits (adding 40 minutes to our itinerary!) and bad traffic around cities, but we ended up in the Pyranees and the last hour of driving was absolutely spectacular. It also started off with a delightful visit to Michael’s ancestral home of Lusignan, also home of the legend of Mélusine… but before I get into that, I’m going to take you further backwards on our trip…

Our last night in my Oma’s home was also the final World Cup game. I’m generally not a watcher of sports, but it was very exciting to be in Germany, watching the Germany team win the gold. I was impressed that my Oma knew such a lot about the individual players and about the rules of soccer — pardon me, I mean football. I guess because I grew up with my dad being so indifferent to team sports, I assumed that was the attitude of the whole Fritzen clan.

Oma’s cupboard of mugs is a cupboard of childhood memories. Each of her grandchildren was allowed to pick his or her own mug from the local store called Hettig, and that was forever his or her cup to be used at Oma’s house. We often had hot chocolate from them in the mornings. I still remember that Heidi’s was the blue one with the sun and birds (or did that one belong to Johannes?), Victor had the rhinoceros, my sister had colourful balloons… Mine is the one with the multicoloured umbrellas.

Our first stop on our first day of driving was Bremen. It was fun telling the girls the tale of the Bremen Town Musicians as we drew close to the city. We impulsively stopped in the town centre since it was close to lunchtime and sought out this carillon concert (“Haus des Glockenspiels”), which Michael remembered from our visit here in 2001.

As you can see, the girls were captivated.

After lunch, the girls were delighted to see how many times they could spot the Bremen Town Musicians as we walked around town. (They are everywhere!!!!)

The Schnoorviertel is a touristy area full of shops and the girls were nearly in fits with all the things they wanted to take home. Despite that, it really is a delightful and charming place to wander, with some impossibly narrow streets (still with shops in them!) that make you feel as though you’ve discovered a secret passageway. This wasn’t even the smallest street here…

Our final destination on our first day was “Sneek” (pronounced “snake”) in the Netherlands. Beautiful architecture and canals abound, along with the singular sight of sailboats making their way across a farmer’s field (although, of course, in reality there’s a canal there, just where you can’t see it). It felt strange to me to be in a land where I couldn’t read the street signs, although Dutch is often just close enough to German (and at other times to English!) that I can figure stuff out. This jug at the restaurant De Lachende Koe (where all things are decorated with a laughing cow) made me laugh. I’ve always teased Michael that his Saskatchewan accent makes him pronounce certain words oddly. For example, he says “melk”, not “milk”. Perhaps he actually has Dutch roots?

The highlight of our brief stay in Sneek was visiting the sand-sculpting competition. This is an annual event and Michael and I both wondered how the sculptures could stay so well-preserved against the elements of wind and rain, as they evidently are viewable for a couple of months. This year’s theme was Hollywood. Halia’s favourite sculpture was this depiction of “Toy Story”.

And then the girls got to make their own sculpture!

There, now I think we are mostly caught up…

Except I haven’t shown you a thing from today, of course, and we saw some amazing sights. But now it is closing in on midnight. I am sitting on a comfortable bed in a perfectly charming bed and breakfast perched on the mountainside, with a five-year-old softly sleeping and waiting for me to join her. Outside, a rainstorm broke out minutes after we arrived, so we are soothed by the sound of raindrops on cobblestone, the rumble of thunder, and the soft, cool breeze that is a balm after two days of sweltering weather. I believe I shall sleep well tonight!

Filed under: Life Updates]]>https://fawnahareo.com/2014/07/18/a-few-more-pics-of-the-european-whirlwind-tour/feed/1Fawn20140718-073105-27065938.jpg20140718-073106-27066779.jpg20140718-073108-27068555.jpg20140718-073107-27067670.jpg20140718-073239-27159625.jpg20140718-073238-27158719.jpg20140718-073240-27160499.jpg20140718-073241-27161371.jpg20140718-073352-27232193.jpgThrough Europe, backwardshttps://fawnahareo.com/2014/07/17/through-europe-backwards/
https://fawnahareo.com/2014/07/17/through-europe-backwards/#respondThu, 17 Jul 2014 20:28:03 +0000http://fawnahareo.wordpress.com/?p=2896]]>Here’s a wee taste of our trip since leaving the Fritzen family reunion. I added the photos using the WordPress app on my iPhone and they ended up all out of order, but whatev. It’s either lazy posting or no posting at all.

Here’s a shot from lunchtime today. We were on the beach in Normandy, enjoying the perfect beach weather. We had just finished a visit to the very excellent Juno Beach Centre, which explains the events leading up to D-Day. It was enlightening to understand something of the economic, political, and cultural climate of the years leading up to WWII, and there was information specifically geared toward kids, too.

As a former student of marketing, I was drawn to some of the wartime posters. I thought this one was pretty fantastic from a graphic design point of view.

Here’s Michael outside the observation bunker built by the German army. In 1944, it was at the edge of the beach, but wind and waves have changed the landscape significantly.

Random beach shot because it was perfect out.

Near the entrance of the centre, rows and rows of posts represent the over 300 men who fell on the first day of the D-Day mission. They came from all across Canada, although this one caught my eye because the fellow was from Minneapolis. There’s a QR code on the back of each post so you can read up on the life of each man. I don’t have a QR app, but I hope to look him up.

This fire hydrant was just down the street from the fantastic B&B where we stayed the night in Creully, about 20 minutes drive from the Juno Beach Centre. I just wanted to capture it because it looks decidedly feminine to me.

A monument to the fallen sons of Creully was evidently yarn-bombed last month.

Enjoying a glass of local “cidre demi-sec” at dinner. (And Jade is clearly enjoying her apple juice.)

This might be the girls’ only chance ever to be inside a telephone booth…

Creully has a château that we didn’t get to explore. And there are many other sights around that could easily turn this part of France into a weeks-long holiday.

We spent Wednesday at Vimy Ridge. We had a tour of the underground tunnels used to capture the ridge, and the above-ground trenches. The monument itself is beautiful, imposing, and very moving. Halia was enthusiastic about learning more about the end of WWI, Remembrance Day, and how it connects to her birthday (November 11th) and her name, which is Hawaiian for remembrance.

Someone had left these at the base of the monument. It appears to be rocks in water in one container. The other might contain ashes (?) but the 613 area code tells me these folks were from Ottawa.

The Grange trench used by Canadians at Vimy.

Our previous day was spent in The Netherlands. An impromptu stop in this charming town was full of delights for the girls, including an affectionate cat, a close encounter with a duck, some amazing fresh strawberries, and Jade finding a boat with her name on it.

Dutch is often so close to German… But even if you speak neither Dutch or German, I’m betting you can figure out what this idiom is.

Even the girls loved the architecture.

Aforementioned close encounter of the duck kind.

Entering Belgium. We just drove through. Except Antwerp took 2 hours longer to “drive through” than planned…That’s it for today. Tomorrow we’ll get further south in France and prepare to drive through the Pyranees into Spain. Pray for cooler weather for us, please. We northerners are melting in 35 Celsius!